Tales from the Body Box - the lockdown herd grows and grows

During lockdown, I suspect many hobbyists are finding a lot of distraction, comfort, or just plain time-filling while other interests are off the schedule, by throwing themselves into whatever creative pursuits they can get on with in the safety and seclusion of their own homes. 

I've already painted as many Stablemates in the last few months as I did in through all of 2019, resulting in rather flooding the blog here with newly finished customs. Luckily I've not yet run out of paint, and have even had a little parcel of exciting new SM bodies arrive, so there's no sign of this Tales from the Body Box category fizzling out any time soon!

First we have Courvoisier, the dressage hanoverian mould in fleabitten grey. The inspiration for this was the Burghley winner Ballaghmor Class, though it's not a portrait model I've always liked how extremely speckled that horse is, and I'd never tried painting one with that much colour, so I gave it a go. I did the faintly shaded grey base coat first, then used a toothbrush to flick on the dark brown paint, diluted a tiny bit to make it spray finely rather than spattering in an appaloosa spot style, and just built up layer after layer til I was happy with the level of speckling. I'm quite pleased with the results, I'd definitely try this technique again.

Next up, another grey, based on this reference picture, though he ended up a little bit different because dappling by hand is so fiddly and nerve wracking and easy to mess up, I stopped before it got any worse! 

I've named him Maximus, and was going to dress him up for the show ring with braid and ribbons, cos a bright colour would make his paintwork pop, but soon realised his mane's on the wrong side of his neck for that (it'd be plaited with the loose hair falling down the off side in real life), and that put me off wanting to do it - a whole lot of fiddly work, just to create something that'd be wrong anyway!

What I love about this mould is how they can be tipped into a rearing pose - they'll balance like this ok for photos but I do make sure they have their front toe down on the shelf just so they can't suddenly decide to shift position and set off an equine domino effect all along the bookcase in the middle of the night!

Finally (for now - I've already started on the next batch!), here's Thunderbird, a colour idea I've had in the back of my mind for absolutely ages : the mustang in a loud pinto. 

Maybe I paint too many of these round-patchy tobianos. 

I definitely paint too many bay pintos. 

But I like painting bay pintos, so who cares! I think now more than ever the #1 rule for model horse collectors should be to buy or paint what you enjoy, whatever makes you happy; and painting bright little skewbalds is keeping me happy so there'll always be more and more.